


Shift

by LittleMuse



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-09-16
Updated: 2013-04-03
Packaged: 2017-10-23 19:35:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/254083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleMuse/pseuds/LittleMuse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Take what you want, God said to man, and pay for it.</i> Post-CoS Roy/Ed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It's a normal day, when it happens. It always is.

They're still moving in; it seems like they've been loading and unloading for days. It's a small place, smaller than their last, but it's out of Berlin, out of Germany, and by extension he hopes, safer. It's just the three of them anyway, Ed thinks to himself, as he sets another crate down and straightens, observing the new kitchen with an appraising eye.

"Al," he calls over his shoulder without turning from the dusty window. "Have you got that one with all my books?"

There's a huff from the tiny corridor and a soft _thwunk_. "Some of these," he hears Al say, "are mine."

"Our books, then," Ed grins and turns to find Al standing in the doorway, which is expected. What is not is the middle-aged woman leaning awkwardly beside his brother, looking around more curiously than any of the apartment's new occupants.

Al glances at her and then back to Ed. "This is Madame Lefèvre, from downstairs," he explains. "She says her husband can help us carry things."

"Oh," Ed says, looking her over, from her brown pumps to her salt and pepper hair.

" _Bonjour,_ " she greets him and Ed nods politely. She's looking them both over from her shorter stature, not quite trustingly, and Ed wonders if perhaps the offer of help is a ploy to eavesdrop, discover what they're all about. Ed's not sure they're about anything very much intriguing anymore, but it's a disconcerting feeling all the same.

Let her snoop. They have nothing to hide, really, even if Ed still feels like they do.

"Papa," comes another, younger voice, and then Erik rounds the corner, struggling under the weight of another box almost as large as he is. His mop of dark hair peeks over the top of it and his knee-socked shins out from the bottom, the only testaments to the fact that he is indeed bearing it. "Are these my toys?"

Al snorts at him and lifts the crate from his hold, nearly hefting the small boy up with it.

"Your toys are already in the bedroom," Ed tells him, watching Erik hop in an attempt to retrieve the box from his uncle's much taller grasp. He eventually relents and bounds over to Ed. Ed catches him around the shoulder with his good arm, dragging him back until he's braced against him. "Can you say 'hello' to Madame Lefèvre?"

Erik blinks up at the woman shyly, gripping his father's forearm. "Hello," he says.

Madame Lefèvre looks at him oddly, no doubt taking in the child's tanned skin and ebony curls and wondering at it. Ed glances to Al, ready to banish her from the flat if she comments, if he hears one more hushed " _bohémien_ ," like they have from others on the street.

" _Mon fils,_ " Ed informs her, an edge of a challenge in his voice.

Madame Lefèvre looks up at him, startled from her stupor. " _Donc, vous avez une femme?_ "

A wife. Ed exhales, exasperated. "No," he says. " _Morte._ " Just gone, really, but what good does it do this woman to know the difference? A dead mother is more socially acceptable here than one who simply can't stay in one place.

Madame Lefèvre eyes Erik again and Ed can't tell if her observation is more or less harsh. " _Je suis desolée._ "

Ed doubts she is sorry, but a booming voice cuts off any further conversation, loud enough that he feels Erik start in his arms.

" _Bonjour!_ " they hear from the corridor and Al stifles a laugh. An older gentleman enters and Ed thinks this must be the husband, who already seems much more congenial than his wife. Ed's reminded strongly of Armstrong and he imagines Al is thinking much the same. " _Je suis Lefèvre!_ " And the man reaches for Ed's hand despite the barrier that is Erik and Ed has to awkwardly control his automail's grip in order to gently shake it. " _Bienvenue à Paris; nous avons besoin de jeunes. D'où est-ce que vous venez?_ "

Al shoots Ed a look as Lefèvre claps him good-naturedly on the shoulder. Where are they from, indeed.

" _Partout,_ " Ed says, ambiguously, earning him a dissatisfied look from Madame Lefèvre. Everywhere. " _A Londres. A Munich. A Berlin. Ici, maintenant._ " Here is all that matters now.

Lefèvre's eyes fall to Erik as well, but he passes him over with only mild interest, free of the judgment in his wife's eyes. Ed's grip on his son tightens, nonetheless.

"Erik, why don't you go unpack your toys?" he suggests, giving the child a gentle push. Erik moves obediently to the kitchen's entrance, skirting carefully around the Lefèvres and then past them, loafers thumping down the corridor. Ed turns back to Lefèvre. " _Il y a des boîtes en bas,_ " he instructs, pointedly. It's a bit dismissive for someone who has kindly offered to help, but Ed's not overly concerned about it. Lefèvre nods with nothing more than a smile, though, turning to go retrieve more crates. After a moment, his wife follows reluctantly after him.

"She was looking at me," Al tells Ed as they watch them go. "And when I said hello, she offered. Should I have said no?"

"No, Al, it's fine." It's strange, but not dangerous, as far as Ed can tell, and he knows Al hates to be rude, especially to someone with nothing more than good intentions. It's just habit, keeping their heads down, and one Ed doesn't want to break with more and more soldiers swarming and a less than Aryan child.

"You worry too much," Al points out and Ed scoffs. It feels as though he's spent his whole life taking care of and protecting a handful of other people and being a parent only elevates those instincts in a way he can't help.

He's lost enough.

 

* * *

 

"Hey, kid." Ed raps gently on the bedroom door later that evening, long after the neighbors have gone. He watches Erik, who's seated cross-legged on the floor, a circle of toy trucks and animals surrounding him. Erik doesn't look up, pushing one of the tiny vehicles with a softly voiced _vroom_. Ed smiles. "What d'you think of the place?"

Erik shrugs. "S'small."

"Yeah," Ed agrees begrudgingly, propping a shoulder against the door frame. "You, me, and Uncle Al - we do all right though, yeah?"

Erik hums to his truck.

Ed wants to tell Erik that he can come to him, can tell him if he misses his mother, or the lack of her presence in his life if not her, herself. Madame Lefèvre has him thinking about it and Ed would like some reassurance even though it's selfish of him to ask it of a six-year-old child.

Ed doesn't miss Noah, really, was never overly attached to her, only wishes her the best in running as far as she can get from the brewing mess, but Erik is allowed to think differently.

"Are we gonna stay here?" Erik asks after a moment.

Ed clears his throat. "For a while," he says. "Long as we can." Until they can get back to London, maybe, where they speak Amestran, where things are even safer than here.

"I miss Berlin."

"I know."

"Don't you?" Erik looks up, like of course Ed must, and it gives Ed pause. No, not really, he doesn't, they had only been there about four years and Ed's never been the type to call anywhere home.

Even if he were, Berlin wouldn't be it.

"Yeah," he says though, for his son's benefit. "Maybe one day we'll get to go back. But for now, we're gonna have fun here, okay?" Erik nods to his truck and Ed steps further into the room. "Now, bedtime."

Erik opens his mouth for what will surely be a whine, but one stern look and he shuts it again, climbing to his feet with a pout and crossing the room to his little bed. Ed tugs the blankets back, waiting for him to crawl in before drawing them up.

"You gonna be okay in here?" he asks. He's starting to think he should have shared with Erik and let Al take the spare room, but Erik nods.

"Story?" he asks hopefully.

Erik is one of the few people with whom Ed has a captive audience when he talks about home, because the boy doesn't know the truth of it from a fairytale. It fascinates him the way Grimm does, and sometimes it's cathartic for Ed and sometimes it's painful.

Now's not a time for the former.

Ed smiles ruefully. "Not tonight," he says.

He reaches for the chain of the nearby lamp and pulls it, stroking a hand over Erik's head before rising and moving to the door.

When he returns in the morning, the bed is empty.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I started this aaages ago and recently felt a serious urge to get back into it. Hope you guys like it.


	2. Chapter 2

"You're sure you want to be in the office today."

"Sir." Both the tone and the title are a clipped warning. They are already within the walls of Central Command and Riza never likes her decisions second-guessed. She walks at a brisk pace at his back, ever professional, and he halts so she will, turning to face her.

"Riza," he says and she blinks once at him.

"Roy," she replies.

"I'm serious."

"So am I, sir." Her face is the picture of impassive and Roy wonders if she's daring him to contradict her outright. "If anything, I am more fit to work than we had hoped."

It's not an attempt at dark humor, merely a statement of fact, and one Roy cannot refute, but he hadn't been speaking of her physical condition. With a resigned sigh, he nods at her and continues on down the hall, opening the door to the office and ushering her through.

The mood is light and bustling inside, if not with work then with jokes and coffee, and Roy feels oddly out of place in it. Riza makes her way immediately to her own desk and Roy sees no reason not to do the same.

"Mornin', sirs," Breda greets them, tipping a paper cup in their direction. Roy acknowledges him with a look before continuing on to his own office, aware of the tension he and Riza have cast on the outer room by the good four pairs of eyes that follow him. His door has barely shut before there's a knock on it.

He sighs, slipping out of his jacket and dropping it over the back of his chair. "Come in." There comes the sound of the door opening and then the soft scrape of it closing again. "Something I can do for you, Major?" Roy asks the window.

He listens to Havoc clear his throat. "Uh," he coughs. "Armstrong asked me to deliver this to you." There's the gentle slap of a file falling to his desk and then a pause, during which Jean's presence doesn't retreat.

"Thank you," Roy says, and nothing more.

"... Permission to speak freely, sir."

"Granted," Roy says, against his better judgment.

"You and the colonel seem a little... strained."

Roy clears his throat and pivots away from the window. "Now, Jean, this wouldn't be you prying into my marital affairs, would it?"

"No, sir."

"Good."

"Just wonderin' if you had a fight or something, that's all."

Roy opens his mouth to explain to Havoc that that is indeed the very definition of prying, but then he decides that he would like out of this conversation as soon as possible. Banter is not going to encourage Havoc to leave. "No."

"Oh."

Roy lifts an eyebrow at the clear disappointment in his voice. "Is that all?"

Havoc shifts from one foot to the other and Roy swallows the urge to simply order him to stand at ease for his own comfort. "Was kind of hoping the problem was just domestic, sir."

"There is no problem, Havoc." It's not entirely a lie. There's nothing to be solved, just. Nothing.

"So, this has nothing to do with the doctor's appointment the colonel had this morning?"

Roy was reaching for the file Jean had dropped, but he freezes before he can open it. Havoc is watching him carefully, concern obvious.

"See, I was... hoping nothing was wrong, there."

Roy stares until he's sufficiently satisfied that he's making Havoc nervous. Then he plops back into his chair, dragging a tired hand over his face. "We had thought - _hoped_... we had hoped that Riza was pregnant." He forces a smile and looks up. "Another false alarm, that's all. Nothing terminal."

"I'm sorry, sir."

Roy shrugs a shoulder, eye back on the file.

"Was the colonel very disappointed?"

Roy doesn't know exactly how to answer that. She was, yes, _is_ ; more so than he ever would have imagined when they were first married, when Riza had hardly seemed the type to want such common or messy things as motherhood. But he hardly thinks his wife would appreciate him spreading that around. He knows she would rather they all simply assume, accept it, and then treat her no differently.

She's a woman, yes, and she sees no reason to bring that to the office.

"You know her," Roy says, finally lifting the file and flicking it open. "She's a pillar of strength. She'll be fine." He glances over the cover sheet, curiously. "If there's nothing else?"

"No, sir."

"Dismissed, then."

"Yes, sir. Right, sir." Havoc hovers momentarily, observing Roy's intent expression and furrowed brow, and turns to go.

"Major," Roy suddenly calls after him and he halts.

"Sir?"

Roy lifts the manila folder and demands, "What is this?"

Havoc frowns and lifts his shoulders. "Armstrong didn't tell me, sir," he says. "Just said it needed your attention."

Roy stares at him, then back down at the sheaf of papers, expression dark.

"Something wrong?"

Roy sighs. "No," he says. "Dismissed."

Roy's not watching carefully enough to see if Havoc's satisfied with the answer, but he throws a lazy salute and heads back into the outer office, so he can't be overly curious. Roy gazes at the documents and the photos paper-clipped to their edges. Symbols and swirls, some familiar, some dangerous.

"Interesting," he tells the empty room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These are both sort of just two halves of the same prologue.


	3. Chapter 3

Ed knows something is wrong the moment he wakes; the air is heavy with it, like the whiff of an approaching storm, the crackling promise of an untouched array. It's only when he rolls over to snatch his watch off the nightstand and flick it open that he realizes the problem - it's after eight a.m. and he hasn't been woken by an eager child, demanding breakfast and attention. Ed blinks at the watch face, but the time doesn't change, so he rises. He pulls on trousers and tugs his hair through a tie, and heads to the other bedroom. Perhaps the move and new surroundings have thrown off Erik's rhythm, he tells himself, but he already knows that's not right without knowing _why_.

The bed is empty, the _room_ is empty, bedclothes barely rumpled, and Ed steps on a toy truck as he stumbles backward. "Al," he's already saying. Erik wouldn't go to the outhouse alone, certainly not in a new place, but Ed glances out the back window just in case. Three stories down, in the tiny back lawn, the outhouse door stands open and dark. "Al," he calls again, moving for the kitchen. More boxes, there and along the corridor, unpacked. No Erik. " _Al!_ " 

"What is it?" Al's in the doorway now, hair loose around his shoulders, watching Ed frantically opening cabinets like he thinks he's gone mad. 

"Erik's gone," Ed says. As soon as the words are out of his mouth, he begins to understand the truth of them, and he stops for a good five seconds, half-catatonic. "Erik's _gone_."

"He's probably-" 

"He's _gone_ , Al!" And Ed stumbles past his brother without waiting for a response, out of the kitchen, out of the flat, and down the steps, only realizing once he's on the floor beneath them that he has no idea where he's going. Years tracking people, investigating people, _years_ , and he can't keep his head.

"Brother!" 

"What number are they, Al?" Ed demands, whirling to face the jogging footfalls, because it's the only lead he has. No struggle, no trail, just blind instinct.

Al stares at him, blinks back obvious fear and confusion. But both of their minds tick too fast in general for that to last, and it's the space of one moment to the next before his eyes are clearing and his jaw locking. He shares Ed's anger now. Good.

He moves past Ed and begins leading the way, down more steps and all the way to the ground floor. Al stops at the second door on the left and Ed passes him before he remembers to stop too. He reaches around his brother to bang on the door with his right hand. 

"Hey, open up!" he shouts. He bangs again without waiting for an answer. "If you don't come out, I'm coming in!" He stops knocking long enough to say, "Al, go round the other side of the building." 

Al leaves to obey without questioning him. Another curious door opens along the corridor. 

"All right, that's it!"

Adrenaline, Ed has learned, is as much a sense memory as anything else. Instinct kicks in before reason, and he's clapping without thinking. Realizing what he's done only makes him angrier and the shoulder the door receives is all the more aggressive for it. It caves after two good shoves. It's not even locked.

Ed rushes in and skids to a stop. Similar to their own apartment; unfinished wood floors, dusty sills, cramped rooms. And empty. No people. No furniture. A cobweb shines in the muted morning light of the kitchen's window, undisturbed. 

" _Shit!_ " Ed says, and turns to kick the door frame before remembering that he's still barefoot. He stands there a moment, in pain and panicking. Then he makes himself breathe and go retrieve Al. 

His brother is waiting outside, around the western corner of the building, diligently watching the windows; there's no door this side. He's shoeless as well, watching Ed's approach with determined eyes. 

"Not there," he says tonelessly. Ed shakes his head. 

"No." 

Al lifts an eyebrow at him with the calm of someone far too accustomed to emergencies, _what now_ , and Ed sighs.

"Back to Berlin," he says. Back into the center of a building war. "I want to know who knows we're here."

* * *

"Roy."

Riza stands in the doorway to his study, hand still resting on the doorknob. She looks at him like she's checking on a child who's been playing with suspicious quiet, eyes flicking from him to the papers and books on his desk. "Gracia and Hans are here," she says. "Are you almost done?"

"Yes," Roy says, and clears his throat. "I'll just be a moment."

But Riza steps into the room, settles a hand on his shoulder and brushes fingers over the pages of the nearest book. She's no alchemist, but she knows the difference between fire arrays and what she's looking at. "What is this?" she asks, wary, and Roy sighs because he's not entirely sure himself. Riza looks up at him again. "What are you doing with this?"

His eyebrows shoot up and he sits back. "What am _I_ -?" She stares at him, eyes wide, and he doesn't quite know what to make of what that look must mean. "Riza," he says, settling a hand around her wrist, "I wouldn't touch these arrays with a ten foot pole. You don't have to explain their gravity to me."

"So it is what I think, then," she says, flipping the book's cover over to be sure. "What are you looking at them for?"

Roy spares a moment to wish he had left all this at the office, but his books are here and there was little choice. He reaches for the file that Havoc brought him that morning and hands it to his wife, silent while she opens it and glances through.

"Armstrong found those symbols scratched all over the place in a warehouse in Lior," Roy tells her. "Scattered, no actual circles yet."

"Who did them?"

Roy flicks his pen between his fingers, glaring at his desk. "Someone who can't get their math to add up," he says. "I just pray it's still theoretical and not applied; Armstrong says no one has been reported missing."

"Roy," she says, setting the papers down carefully. She crosses her arms and talks to them instead of him. "Tell me what you're not telling me."

He gazes at the symbol for phosphorous and considers lying. She would know. "It's Gate alchemy," he says. "The stone. Not just human."

"Why does this have to come to you?"

"Because I'm the only one this side who's worked with it, you know that. It's useless, anyway, even if they could get it to work - it's a lock without a key. They would need someone..." He rubs at his forehead and then stands. There are guests waiting, after all. "It doesn't matter," he says, gathering papers and tapping them straight.

"Tell me," she says. "This is complicated alchemy?"

"Yes." There are transmutations here that even he doesn't understand, possibly so advanced that it would be very easy to write off as gibberish, but he can't.

"So, it's unlikely, then..." Riza sighs and props her hip against the desk. "They must understand. Someone looking into this. They must know all the things they need to make it work, whether they've fit them together correctly or not. They must know they need help."

Roy can't think about what she's implying. He can't think about someone on this side being in contact with someone on the other, can't think about that being possible. Can't think about the few people on the other side who would even be capable.

Edward is gone. He is safe. And he is gone.

"Well, they don't have it," he says. "Whatever they think they can do is irrelevant. I'm only interested in what they can do. And what they can do is harm civilians, attempting this. That's why it's on my desk."

He didn't ask for this to fall in his lap. Roy never told her everything he lost, but he's never doubted that she knows, either, and he needs her to understand that whoever drew the half-arrays in these photos is the only one trying to reopen the Gate. What's dead is dead; forgetting that is dangerous.

Riza says nothing, eyes roving over his face. Roy takes a step back from her.

"What'd you make for dinner?"

"Chicken," she says. "Hans brought that bread you like." Elysia shouts outside the door; she must have found the dog.

He nods, and though he knows she hates it in private, says with the finality of superior rank, "Let's just enjoy our evening." Which is silly, because he won't and can't, and he knows better than to think she doesn't know that, than to think she still will herself in spite of it.

They need new jobs, one and all. Some days, it's only promises he's made, that little girl outside the study door, that keep him from turning in his resignation. The knowledge that the Rockbells are dead and that Ed is alive.

He shuts the folder, but the images are already burned into his mind.

* * *

In the end, splitting up is the only option. Ed knew that the moment he made the decision to go, but they waste a precious hour arguing about it, while Ed stomps from the closet to his valise and back.

"We work better together," is Al's first and last line of defense. It's not untrue.

"It happened here, Al," Ed says. "If there are any clues, they're here." What Ed has is a hunch and not much else, a hunch that this is about _them_ and _him_ and not about something as simple and horribly irrelevant as the color of Erik's skin. He tends to be lucky, he tends to be right. But he's probably wrong. And if he is, he's going off in entirely the wrong direction, leaving the only trail they have to cool.

Even if he's right, he's flying blind. He misses unlimited resources, everything he took for granted. At this point, he's not even sure he can afford his train ticket. _Money doesn't grow on trees, there, chief._

He slumps over his clothes with a sigh, and then reaches up to settle mismatched hands on Al's shoulders. "We have no friends," he tells him, because he needs his brother to understand. They're new in Paris, didn't leave much behind in Germany. What he wouldn't give just for his father right now, and isn't that a thought. Someone to leave behind. "There's no one else. I can't be in two places at once. I... there's no one else."

It shouldn't be as terrifying to admit as it is. Wasn't that always the case? Only since leaving is Ed beginning to realize that it never was.

It never was.

He sees Al's giving in even before he admits it. "I'll drop you a line when I arrive," Ed tells him, "and if you find nothing, maybe..." But even then, what if Erik manages to come back? They can't leave nothing for him to find.

"No," Al says, like he's hearing what Ed didn't say as well. He swallows. "I'll stay." And then he blinks. "You don't think Noah..."

Because they heard nothing. Because... but no. She was gone long before Erik could know her, and even still, "She wouldn't," Ed says. Even if she somehow felt she had to, "not without letting me know somehow." Somehow. He wishes he could believe it was Noah. "No." He shakes his head and returns to his packing. "I need to move."

Al crosses to the bureau and tugs out a small bag, returns to Ed's side and presses it into his hands. Reichsmark they haven't converted to francs yet, and some they have. Ed thinks about protesting and then doesn't. It's not everything and Al will take care of himself. Al can take care of himself.

"If you need me," Al says, hand gripping Ed's automail wrist. Al's the only one that doesn't see it as any different from the flesh one, especially this side. Al and Erik.

Ed nods and goes, grabs his things and goes, because leaving Al is not _leaving_ Al, not in the way it always used to be, and he will learn that one day, he will, and even teach it to his heart, too.

**Author's Note:**

> I started this aaages ago and recently felt a serious urge to get back into it. Hope you guys like it.


End file.
